Another dev's two cents

A first look at Digital Ocean's app platform

I've been a user of Digital Ocean (DO) for a few years. Their low cost Virtual Private Server (VPS) tiers were an attractive offer for setting up a basic blog and a fun test bed to learn about web and back-end development and deployment.

Flutter

A Flutter build failure checklist

I've been working with flutter for a while now and I've run into my share of build problems. These tend to happen most frequently when building production versions of my application or following an upgrade to new flutter versions. I've found it helpful to

Kotlin

Benchmarking Kotlin Collections api performance

I recently stumbled across some curious code in the Jetpack Compose source. I recommend taking a look for yourself but in summary, some google engineers had created "fast" versions of the standard Kotlin list manipulation functions for use within the framework. /** * Iterates through a

On generative art and impressionism

I recently took a trip down the intersection between art and programming after some discussions I had with a designer at work comparing what we do every day. This got

Developer

Why it's okay to never "finish" your side projects

Side projects are a near-ubiquitous thing that developers of almost every background tend to have. We've all heard stories about how side projects that were intended to solve small problems their respective authors had made them millions[1][2]. A frequent sentiment I hear

programming

Rust 2020 - On the Rust Development Experience

This is in response to the Call for blog posts for rust 2020. I would like to propose that 2020 be a year where some significant focus is placed on the Rust Development Experience. I define Development experience as tooling and ergonomics that improve

Android

On APKs, RATs and Security Vulnerabilities - HondaHack

I've recently been looking into the capabilities of embedded Android Devices in-vehicle dashboards. A lot of these are fairly expansive and well-integrated solutions that offer consumers a reasonable experience, given that a good portion of these tends to be underpowered Android tablets. Looking around

Programming an Atmega32 using an Arduino

I recently revisited a project I tried to do about 4 years ago. I had bought myself an Atmega32 IC hoping to learn how to work with microcontrollers at a

Fixing the 'Unknown blob' error with Apache and Private docker registries

I recently took on the task of setting up a private docker container registry. It's useful if you would like to host private images and are comfortable running your own infrastructure. A private container registry is relatively simple to setup using the instructions on

How to properly update the Gradle wrapper

The Gradle wrapper is a self-contained Gradle runner and distribution that's typically built into your Gradle project. It's bundled into the project is to guarantee that all developers working on the project have a similar build environment. This means that updating the Gradle wrapper

Hardware

Visualizing 27 years of mobile devices

Device ownership has come a long way over the years. Smart devices are more personal than ever with a sizable chunk of the modern population having owning at least a

Hardware

Messing with the DSO138. A $25 oscilloscope

We got a new toy at the office a while ago which I've been super excited to get my hands on. When I accidentally stumbled across a sub $25 oscilloscope

Hardware

Programming the MSP430 using docker

Docker is awesome. It's super handy for many things especially in the dev ops world but a personal favorite use case of mine would be creating disposable execution environments and

Devops

Essential docker - talk write up

So a little while ago I gave a talk about docker where I talked about why I think you should be using docker as well as how to get started.

Java

Pitfalls working with jitpack

If you work with java or the JVM a lot, you're probably familiar with build tools like maven, Gradle and the like. These are all backed by some variety of

Android

Why automated recruitment tools fail

It's no secret I've been on the job hunt for a couple of weeks now. The hunt for a great team to work with is as much a challenge for

Aircraft

Accident analysis: US Airways Flight 1549

Abstract An Airbus A320-214 experienced an almost complete loss of thrust in both engines. The aircraft was subsequently ditched on the Hudson River approximately 8.5 miles from the site

Gradle

How to get IDEA to detect kotlin generated sources using Gradle

So I recently got my hands on Kotlin and it's been great so far. However one of the things that the IDEA kotlin plugin doesn't do[1] is detect the kapt folder which contains any sources generated from annotation processing. This can be fixed

Gaming

Hands on with Machinarium

I love indie games. They give me a break from big AAA titles by providing small but well-developed experiences. They tend to be sincere expressions of what game developers "

programming

Git gud - Talk write up

I recently gave a talk at the TTU geeky weekly on Git SCM[1]. It gave a general overview of SCM, basic features of git as a SCM tool and

Algorithm

Is Kanye Zipfy?

I came across an interesting tool over the weekend. Kanye rest is a quick hack that a couple of students over in Manchester put together over a long weekend[1]

Code

Quick tip: Quickly parse and filter data with regex find and replace

Dealing with data is sometimes a pain in the rear end. It typically comes full of unwanted extras that can be a pain to filter out by hand. One of the most common ways of dealing with this is to write some kind of

programming

Trying out BASIC

A little while ago, Usborne released some of their classic 80s programming books for free[1]. While it may not a have been a complete collection, it's still pretty cool

Hardware

Automate programming the MSP430 Launchpad on Linux using Expect

Programming and debugging the MSP430 on Windows is a bit of a straight forward affair. You simply install the Code Composer Studio (CCS) integrated development environment (IDE) and in a

Gaming

Hands on with Tales from the Borderlands

Let me just get this out of the way: I'm a huge fan of the Borderlands series and it's not hard to see why. Borderlands is a huge open world